This is a three-phase social survey which will focus on the relationship of alcohol use to role performance in major life areas (e.g. work, marriage, the family). The study will pivot around "life problems" and the extent to which these problems, (1) lead to heavy drinking, (2) result from heavy drinking, (3) are exacerbated by modified, ameliorated or coped with by drinking. The three phases of the study will therefore look for cause and effect relationships and will utilize retrospective and prospective study designs. A telephone screening survey of 14,000 random inhabitants of Greater Boston will produce a stratified sample of 2,000 persons including among others most or all persons identified in the screening as heavy drinkrs. These 2,000 people will then be interviewed in depth regarding the relationship of their alcohol use to life problems. We will then select approximately 500 to 750 persons for a panel follow-up with repeated interviews for 2 1/2 years. This group will include several sub-groups of particular conceptual importance, e.g. (a) heavy drinkers with few life problems, (b) heavy drinkers with life problems which appear to have preceded their heavy drinking, (c) heavy drinkers with life problems which appeared subsequent to the onset of their drinking, (d) heavy drinkers with life problems whose drinking and life problems increased concurrently, (e) light drinkers with severe life problems, and (f) light drinkers who appear to have few life problems. This follow-up will attempt to, (a) prospectively examine life events which may lead to drinking and increased drinking which may lead to life problems, and (b) compare and contrast those persons whose life problems foster drinking, or whose drinking foster life problems with those for whom the two may not be linked.